OUCH! by MR.E.

Friday, September 25, 2015

aka Roboman, The Man in the Steel Mask is an early 70s paranoid thriller oddity. It came out the same year as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye;
Elliot Gould starred in both.

as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973)

A top American physicist attends a conference in East Germany but ends
up in a suspicious car accident. He is forced to get re-construction
surgery in East Germany and gets metal implants. The rest of the film is
Elliot Gould’s US Agent trying to figure out if he is the real deal or a
spy for the Germans. Trevor Howard co-stars as a Russian
general.

Released in 1973 after a prolonged dry spell for Gould, “Who?”
is a
decidedly minor blip in Gould’s overall career. A rather gentle drama about a gentle, misunderstood man.

An American physicist who gets in a car wreck during a visit to Russia,
after which surgeons replace his face, organs and the bulk of his limbs
with those of a cyborg. For the rest of the film (based on Algis Budrys’
novel), a government agent (Gould) and his team try to figure out if
the scientist’s mutation story checks out or if he’s actually a Russian
spy.

Gould had more to say about the time period in which he shot “Who?” than the film itself.

“When Bob [Altman] was putting together ‘California Split,’ thinking
we were gonna do it with Steve McQueen, at that point I was in Munich
making an interesting B-movie called ‘Who?’ Maximilian Schell showed me
his picture ‘The Pedestrian,’ and in it, he says, ‘The closer you are,
the less you can see.’ As I said, I was more than just confused, I was
so ignorant as to how [the industry] worked.”

Friday, September 18, 2015

“Disregard their good looks/They’re just a bunch of dirty crooks/With skirts showin’ plenty of knee/That’s the Mini-Skirt Mob/On another spree.”

Thus begins the 1968 exploitation oddity "The Mini-Skirt Mob," with a jaunty theme song sung by Patty McCormack, former child star ("The Bad Seed") turned B-movie actress, who plays Edie, the kid sister to Shayne, the villain of the piece, played with bouffant-haired menace by Diane McBain ("Surfside Six"). McBain and McCormack had co-starred with Fabian in "director Maury Dexter's infamous "Maryjane" earlier that year.

PATTY McCORMACK

Written by James Gordon White ("The Glory Stompers," "The Thing with Two Heads"), it's a strange combination of biker movie and western revenge drama – McBain's character is reminiscent of Mercedes McCambridge in "Johnny Guitar," albeit a lot better-looking and a bleach blonde – with the plot consisting of Shayne's single-minded, psychotic vengeance against her former lover, rodeo champ Jeff Logan (Ross Hagen), who has had the gall to marry another woman (Sherry Jackson). Shayne enlists the aid of her sister's boyfriend, Lon (Jeremy Slate), his rodeo tramp sidekicks Spook (Harry Dean Stanton) and L.G. (Ronnie Rondell), and redheaded bimbos Fran and Bea (Sandra Marshall and Barbro Hedström) in her quest to win back Jeff's love through extreme violence. Shayne is the leader of "The Mini-Skirts" motorcycle gang ("They're hog-straddling female animals on the prowl" according the tagline on the film's poster art), and soon proves that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, as she pulls out all the stops to achieve her evil goal, from a wild catfight with the bride to tossing Molotov cocktails at the newlyweds' trailer.

ROSS HAGEN

McBain is pure malevolence as the unhinged biker chick, even if she looks more like a slumming débutante than a badass motorcycle mama. Speaking of which, the bikes in the film are closer to scooters than choppers, which significantly undercuts the intended menace and adds to the overall absurdity of the film. After starting out as a contract player with Warner Brothers, McBain went from movies to TV (she memorably guest-starred on "Batman" as "Pinky Pinkston") to grade Z schlock like "I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew." Her performance in "The Mini-Skirt Mob" is pretty freakin' awesome, as she gives her all despite the mediocrity of the material, elevating the movie in the process.

Jeff Logan, rodeo star, is honeymooning with his new bride in a camper when his old gang shows up. Miffed that Jeff has decided to quite, and fueled by the Mob leader’s jealousy of the new wife, the gang picks a fight and ends up beating up the happy couple. Jeff runs them off with a shotgun. All seems settled, and the bride and groom plan to continue on to the ranch. Unfortunately for them, the gang has other plans. In classic horror film style, the gang begins a tirade of attacks and after the death of LG (as a result of trying to run the camper off the road with the bikes) sabotage the car, and end up with the couple trapped like sitting ducks in the camper, while they keep watch from a hilltop…

SHERRY JACKSON

There are some unexplained bits, like a Cub Scout troop that witnesses the murder, and illusions to the cops being hot on the trail, but really these never pan out, and it all culminates in the propane tank exploding on the camper from beer bottle molotov cocktails, and a pretty fun motorcycle chase down of the couple on foot at the end, where Spook gets taken down, and the mild mannered bride chooses to let Shane fall to her death, rather than saving her.

DIANE McBAIN JEREMY SLATE

“What is this any how? We was going on a party, now two of us is dead.”

From MR.E. to You

I recently returned to school; as of yet I don't have a major, but I have had a lot of minors...
I was accused of "statutory rape," but my lawyer got the charge reduced to "unlawful entry"...
He argued, how can you call it "rape" if she was already dead?...
When found in a skid row motel with a missing girl's corpse in the bed, it's best to tell the authorities that the room was like that when you checked in...
As an international superstar I try to set an example by giving back to the world and consider my trolling tween chatrooms for confused and lonely girls with daddy-issues a vocation...
I formed a charity to help promiscuous teenage girls- get their start...
I'm single, but "carried a torch" for my ex just long enough to set fire to her new boyfriend's car...
I don't regret one day of our relationship- it was a Thursday...
I want a real skinny girl; not because I think it's sexy, but it's likely she'll have poor self-esteem or a drug problem (those chicks'll do anything!)...
However, I am a sucker for big tits...
My dream is to settle down with a woman with whom I can have a child she wont try to drown...